UCL BLOOMSBURY PROJECT

What is the Bloomsbury Project?

The Leverhulme-funded UCL Bloomsbury Project was established to investigate 19th-century Bloomsbury’s development from swampy rubbish-dump to centre of intellectual life

Led by Professor Rosemary Ashton, with Dr Deborah Colville as Researcher, the Project has traced the origins, Bloomsbury locations, and reforming significance of hundreds of progressive and innovative institutions

Many of the extensive archival resources relating to these institutions have also been identified and examined by the Project, and Bloomsbury’s developing streets and squares have been mapped and described

This website is a gateway to the information gathered and edited by Project members during the Project’s lifetime, 1 October 2007–30 April 2011, with the co-operation of Bloomsbury’s institutions, societies, and local residents

Bloomsbury People and Events

Timeline of the Dukes of Bedford, and the development of the estate

FIRST DUKE OF BEDFORD, WILLIAM RUSSELL (from 1694–1700)

Advancement despite politics, disease, and death

The original Duke of Bedford, William Russell, was the fifth Earl of Bedford, and was created first Duke in 1694

His eldest surviving son and heir, William Russell, had been executed for high treason in 1683

William Russell had been married to Rachel (née Wriothesley), daughter of the fourth Earl of Southampton and wealthy widow of Francis Vaughan, who died of the plague in 1667

Rachel survived smallpox, a miscarriage, and the deaths as babies of both children she had succeeded in having with Francis

She and William Russell had three daughters (the first one dying aged only four months) and then finally one son, born in 1680 when Rachel was almost 45

After her husband was executed, she wore black for the rest of her life

SECOND DUKE OF BEDFORD, WRIOTHESLEY RUSSELL (from 1700–1711)

Successful management by the Dowager Duchess

The first Duke was succeeded by his grandson on his death in 1700

This was Wriothesley, the only son of William and Rachel Russell

He profited from his mother’s shrewd management of the family estate

Rachel, the Dowager Duchess, lived until 1723, and married her two surviving daughters to the Dukes of Devonshire and Rutland

She had married her son to Elizabeth Howland, an extremely wealthy girl; the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that it was after “a year of negotiations in 1693–4 which involved so much property that a parliamentary act was required to settle matters”

This marriage took place in 1695 when they were both under age; they went on to have six children, including two sons successively christened William, both of whom died as children

In 1711 both Rachel’s son Wriothesley and her daughter (the Duchess of Rutland) died, the latter, aged 35, in childbirth and the former, aged 31, of smallpox

THIRD DUKE OF BEDFORD, WRIOTHESLEY RUSSELL (from 1711–1732)

A narrow escape

The third Duke of Bedford was the third and eldest surviving son of the second Duke

He was a spendthrift who endangered the whole Bloomsbury estate

He died aged 24 in 1732 without issue, although married (his widow, Lady Anne Egerton, later remarried and had a child)

His death happened just in time to prevent the estate in Bloomsbury being sold

FOURTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, JOHN RUSSELL (from 1732–1771)

Longevity and consolidation

The fourth Duke of Bedford, John Russell, was the younger brother of the third Duke, and the only other surviving son of the second Duke

He married firstly Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of the third Earl of Sunderland

He succeeded to the title on 23 October 1732, and on 6 November 1732 his wife gave birth to a boy who lived for just one day

Three years later, his wife died

He married secondly Gertrude Leveson-Gower, and they had one son, Francis Russell, and a daughter

He died in 1771 aged 60, having made the estate in Bloomsbury the centre of his political and business dealings

His widow continued to be a driving force in the development of the Bloomsbury estate

FIFTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, FRANCIS RUSSELL (from 1771–1802)

Residential development of the Bloomsbury estate

Francis Russell, the only son of the fourth Duke, had died aged 27 in 1767 after a fall from a horse, leaving two sons under 2 years old and a pregnant widow, Elizabeth (née Keppel)

She went on to have a third son in 1768 and died of tuberculosis four months later

The eldest of the sons, Francis Russell, eventually became fifth Duke on the death of his grandfather in 1771

A month before his death he had announced his engagement to Lady Georgiana Gordon, daughter of the fourth Duke of Gordon

SIXTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, JOHN RUSSELL (from 1802–1839)

The estate in debt

The sixth Duke, John Russell, was the younger brother of the fifth Duke, and the second of the three sons of Francis Russell and Elizabeth, née Keppel, both deceased

He succeeded to the title in 1802 aged 35, not long after the death of his first wife

He was twice married, both times to a Georgiana

His first wife was Georgiana, née Byng, daughter of the fourth Viscount Torrington, and they had three sons; the third was John Russell, who became Prime Minister from 1846 to 1852

After the death of his first wife, the Duke married Lady Georgiana Gordon, who had been engaged to his brother

They had ten children, eight of whom survived to maturity: five sons and three daughters, the last one born when she was 45

Somehow, she also found time to have an affair with the painter Edwin Landseer

The Duke had a nondescript political career, fought a duel with the Duke of Buckingham in 1822, built the market in Covent Garden, and held extravagant parties with his second wife at Woburn Abbey

When he died in 1839, the estate’s debts had doubled to nearly half a million pounds

SEVENTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, FRANCIS RUSSELL (from 1839–1861)

Fighting to regain financial control

The sixth Duke was succeeded on 20 October 1839 by the eldest son out of his family of eleven children, Francis Russell, who tried to re-establish the family’s prosperity

In contrast to his father, he and his wife Anna Maria (née Stanhope) had only one child

EIGHTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, WILLIAM RUSSELL (from 1861–1872)

The estate moribund

The only child of the seventh Duke, William Russell, succeeded him as eighth Duke on 14 May 1861, aged 51

He was a reclusive invalid who did nothing to improve the estates or their management, leaving this largely to his cousin, who eventually succeeded him as ninth Duke

NINTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, FRANCIS RUSSELL (from 1872–1891)

Country improvements and town profits

This Duke, Francis Russell, was the eldest son of the army officer George Russell, the second of the sixth Duke’s children with his first wife, Georgiana Byng

George had married the beautiful but pushy Elizabeth Rawdon (the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says Brougham called her ‘that cursed woman’)

It was their eldest son, Francis Russell, an agriculturalist and country gentleman, who succeeded his cousin as ninth Duke of Bedford on 26 May 1872, when he was 52

He was married to Lady Elizabeth Sackville-West, bridesmaid of Queen Victoria, and they had two sons and two daughters

He spent much of his time improving the country estates, but also gained over a million pounds from Bloomsbury leases falling in

On 14 January 1891 he shot himself

TENTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, GEORGE RUSSELL (from 1891–1893)

Brief reign

The tenth Duke, George Russell, was the elder son of the ninth Duke, and succeeded to the title aged 38 when his father shot himself on 14 January 1891

A barrister and MP, he was married to Lady Adeline Mary Somers-Cocks, but they had had no children when he died suddenly of diabetes two years later and was succeeded by his younger brother

ELEVENTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, HERBRAND RUSSELL (from 1893–1940)

Bloomsbury estates sold to university

The eleventh Duke, Herbrand Russell, was the younger son of the ninth Duke, and younger brother of the tenth Duke; he succeeded his brother as eleventh Duke on 23 March 1893, when he was 35

By then, he was married to Mary du Caurroy Tribe, the ‘Flying Duchess’, who trained as a nurse after her marriage, opened a model hospital at Woburn which later became a military hospital, trained again as a radiographer and radiologer, and then took up flying at the age of sixty; she got her pilot’s licence seven years later and died in a plane crash aged 71

They had one child, a son, Hastings, born within a year of their marriage, who succeeded his father as twelfth Duke during the Second World War

The eleventh Duke himself was a agriculturalist and zoologist who rejected the opportunity of a political career, and who also systematically sold off land from his London estates, including parts of Bloomsbury (mainly to the British Museum and the University of London) and Covent Garden

The Duke became the first Mayor of Holborn in 1900

TWELFTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, HASTINGS RUSSELL (from 1940–1952)

Political and personal difficulties

The twelfth Duke, Hastings Russell, was an evangelical Christian, a pacifist, and an expert on parrots

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, “[i]n 1935 he and his wife separated, after a highly public lawsuit in which she had unsuccessfully sued for restoration of conjugal rights; and in 1939 he disinherited his elder son because of what he saw as an unsuitable marriage”

He became involved with fascist and Nazi organisations before and during the Second World War, succeeded his father as twelfth Duke of Bedford on 27 August 1940, and continued to campaign against the war

In 1952 he shot himself

THIRTEENTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, IAN RUSSELL (from 1952–2002)

Enterprise in the country

The thirteenth Duke, (John) Ian Russell, was the elder son of the twelfth Duke, the one who had been disinherited because of an unsuitable marriage

His first wife, Clare (née Bridgman, formerly married to Major Kenneth Hollway) died of an overdose of sleeping tablets in 1945 on a family holiday, leaving him with two young sons

The inquest recorded an open verdict

The Duke then married Lydia (née Yarde-Buller), widow of Captain Ian Lyle, killed in action at El-Alamein in 1942, and also the single parent of two young children

Together, they had one son

The marriage ended in divorce in 1960, and the Duke married Nicole (née Schneider), a French television producer, who had divorced her first husband Henri Milinaire (with whom she had four children) in 1956

The Duke made the family estate at Woburn Abbey into a massive tourist attraction

FOURTEENTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, HENRY RUSSELL (from 2002–2003)

Another brief reign

The fourteenth Duke, Henry Russell, was the eldest son of the thirteenth Duke from his first marriage

He succeeded his father as Duke in 2002, aged 62, and died the following year at the National Hospital

FIFTEENTH DUKE OF BEDFORD, ANDREW RUSSELL (from 2003–date)

The fifteenth and current Duke, Andrew, is the eldest of the three sons of the fourteenth Duke

(Compiled from Bedford estate office information, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Debrett’s Peerage)